After almost 19 years of writing a question-and-answer column about local history, it’s a mixed blessing to be able to say there’s still a lot I don’t know about San Antonio’s past. Occasionally questions come in about something I’ve already written about, but more often, the topics are brand new to me or approach previous subjects from a fresh angle.

There are always some questions left in the virtual mailbag at the end of the year. These are the ones that fall outside the lines of typical research, often because little was recorded on their subjects and even less has survived. If answers remain elusive or skimpy after several tries, it’s time to turn the questions over to the column’s readers, in case someone out there knows exactly what the letter-writer was talking about and has information or photographs to share.

Notes on camp: Last summer, for instance, Avis “Doris” Corn Booth remembered going to “a Bexar County 4-H camp near Schertz on the Cibolo River in 1947.” The camp had “three large swimming pools in the river made by separate rock dams.” As Booth recalls, “We had a large inflatable raft and had a lot of fun.” She’d like to know exactly where the camp was, how long it was there and what happened to it.

Faces from the past: Jim Earl sent a photo of the Alamo Heights first-grade class of 1926 (above), in which his aunt Evelyn Pape is seated second from the right in the second row from the bottom. Pape, who “came from a large German pioneer family who farmed where the San Antonio (International) Airport is today,” later graduated from Alamo Heights High School and worked as a city secretary before she married Albert Newton, a returning veteran, with whom she had three children.

“I would love to know who the other children were and what happened to them,” Earl says. “Most of the boys, I am sure, served in World War II.”

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Alive and kicking? As San Antonio College celebrated its 85th anniversary in 2010, a college official asked for information about the school’s 1950s Marlins synchronized swimming team that put on a show each spring. No Marlins photos were found at the Institute of Texan Cultures library, nor did the team receive regular coverage in the sports pages of the daily newspapers of the time, although an engagement announcement published in 1962 identified the bride-to-be as a former Marlin.

“It was the era of Esther Williams,” says the college official. “I wonder if any of the swimmers went on to fame and fortune.”

Specials of the day: A Nov. 21 column about St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, 623 E. Commerce St., “brought to mind many wonderful memories” for Marie Hudson Loomis, whose great-grandfather was one of the church builders. “My great-aunt Mary used to tell me that she brought him lunch there when she was a young girl,” says Loomis, who later visited her great-aunt and grandmother when they lived on Bowie Street “just a couple of houses behind the Fairmount Hotel (at its original location).

While reading the St. Joseph’s column, says Loomis, “I tried to visualize the old neighborhood and thought (of) a place I had forgotten for over 50 years.” That was “a Mexican restaurant on a street that ran perpendicular to Bowie, probably before 1956.” The restaurant was “a colorful, one-story place with bright-blue trim, located about a block north of where Macy’s is now.” She’d like the name of the restaurant, “because now it will haunt me.”

A search of San Antonio city directories by San Antonio Conservation Society librarian Beth Standifird didn’t turn up a Mexican restaurant at this location in the years Loomis remembers it. Speaking of midcentury eateries, Jeannene Honeycutt of Corpus Christi asks if anyone has information about the Crispy Dog near Lackland AFB.

Sound effects: Members of the Texas Antique Radio Club are seeking information about two radios made in San Antonio in the late 1950s or early ’60s, writes John Mitchell. One is the Radioette made by the Alamo Electronics Corp., and the other is the Model SF1-1 Sferics severe storm-warning unit radio made by Sferics Inc. “We are looking for any information as to where and when they were made here in San Antonio,” Mitchell says. “We expect that these companies were not in business for long because so few of these radios have shown up in our searches.”

Sferics, advertised in 1958 as “the only electronic storm warning unit available to the public,” as well as a “fine six-tube radio for your listening enjoyment,” was sold by Sferics Inc., listed that year at 1032 Basse Road. Although the ad exhorted readers of the San Antonio Express and News to “see your Sferics dealer today,” none was listed. Alamo Electronics Corp., manufacturers of the Alamo Guitar, Alamo Amplifier and New Hawaiian Electric Guitar, seems to have been active here from 1946, when the company placed want ads for console assemblers and “young women experienced in soldering electrical or radio equipment,” at least to Jan. 23, 1959, when the company reported the theft of “16 guitars and other musical equipment.” The company first was at 105 W. Romana and had moved to 1415 N. Brazos by the time of the burglary.

A catalog available online at www.radiomuseum.org provides specs (broadcast-only, battery-operated, six AM circuits) and schematics for several models of the Radioette, whose date of manufacture is estimated at 1950. Whether the company made other radios in other years is yet to be determined.

To share memories, sources or images related to these open questions of 2010, contact this column. Replies will be forwarded and may be featured in a future column.

E-mail Paula Allen at history?column@yahoo.com. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sahistorycolumn.